Year after his death, wife and daughter continue man's legacy of coaching soccer

Ryan Young | The Grand Rapids PressWendy, left, and Samantha Gilman stand in the doorway of their mobile home near Middleville. Wendy holds the soccer ball with the names of the players he coached in soccer.

At his funeral, they laid a soccer ball on his casket, adorned with the names of the girls he coached.

A year later, his influence lives on, a dad who so impressed his wife and two daughters with what he did in his spare time on a soccer field, they feel compelled to coach in the wake of the life he led, the examples he set.

If you have ever played or coached or been passionate about a sport, this is a Father’s Day story with your name on it. And if you are coasting along as though your future is somehow guaranteed, maybe it’s the sort of story you should read as though your name were on it. Because Shane Gilman was never supposed to die at 39.

As a teen, he badgered Wendy Oldenburger during their last months at Wayland High School, so much so that she finally said to herself, “Fine, I’ll go out with you,” in part just to get him off her back.

At 18, Wendy already had a tough life. She lost her mother to cirrhosis of the liver when she was 8, and living with her father wasn’t a good fit.

“After mom died,” she says, “I flopped from family to family.”

She landed in Illinois, charged to the care of a couple too old to make a good go of it. They put her on a prayer list at their church. An elder took her in, and she became the child of Homer and Ellie Wigboldy, who both survive.

“That’s who I call dad and mom,” Wendy says.

Wendy moved back to Michigan to finish high school at Wayland, where she was a partier. But Shane Gilman, her mirror opposite, saw something more: the love of his life.

Wendy became Wendy Gilman, and together they had Brittany, now 17, and Samantha, 15.

“He swept me off my feet, and I call him my angel,” Wendy said of Shane.

Boy, could she use his wings now.

Since his death some 13 months ago due to cancer of the bile duct, Wendy and the kids have lost virtually everything the couple built together. They had fallen behind in payments on their farmhouse and 14 acres, but with his death and the loss of income, it went into foreclosure.

Insurance didn’t come close to covering Shane’s treatments, billed from as far away as Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic. In all, Wendy’s staring down more than $30,000 in unpaid bills.

Wendy, 40, recently filed for bankruptcy, and now lives with her daughters in a mobile home in a park near Middleville, with generous space between units. “It’s nice,” she says. Still, it’s hardly the acreage she and the girls had grown used to.

Rather than wallow in self-pity, though, Wendy and her daughters decided to honor their husband and father by picking up where he’d left off — coaching soccer.

Shane primarily coached Samantha and her teammates, most recently a 14-and-under AYSO squad.

“He just always had a love of soccer,” Wendy says of her husband, who made a living painting autos.

Their lives were thrown into turmoil, however, when Wendy noticed Shane’s eyes were yellowing. He was diagnosed in April 2009 with a rare cancer of the bile duct called cholangiocarcinoma. He returned home from the Mayo Clinic with predictions he would last six more months. More like 21 days. He died last May.

In the mobile home, Wendy has a tribute wall to her family in photos and text, with Shane as a focal point. There’s Shane with a plaque honoring his five years of coaching. Shane with his daughters. Shane with Wendy, and the words “Loved you yesterday, love you still, always have, always will.”

Most of the coaching these days falls to Samantha, with mom working the sidelines and serving as chauffeur and cheerleader. In a short time, they’ve earned the respect of a girls 10-under team that includes Savannah Bronkema, 8, of Middleville.

Savannah’s schoolteacher father, Daryl, shared with me that “I have coached more than 75 teams in eight sports and past 20-plus years, and I would rank (the Gilmans) right up there toward the top coaches I’ve seen.

“They are organized, hard-working, challenging, informed and fair. They are respectful to every girl regardless of ability. Simply put, their hearts are in it. And what is so impressive … is that they are coaching in honor and remembrance of dad.”

Ryan Young | The Grand Rapids PressA collage of photos of Shane Gilman hang in the home of the Gilman.

Maybe that’s the perfect Father’s Day — doing something to honor the guy who carried you up to bed, swung you around the backyard, cried like a baby at your first dance, broken ankle, graduation.

The best dads don’t ask for much. They shun pedestals. They trudge off to a sometimes thankless job, come home, grill hot dogs, coach soccer, tuck you in.

What Wendy Gilman and her daughters remind us is our interconnectedness — the limitless ways in which we can affect one another, even after one passes on.

In three words, Samantha defined her father as “outgoing, funny, passionate.”

A lot of dads would settle for that, happy to know they’re measured and will be remembered in positives. And that when they’re gone, someone will subtly honor the good things they did, what they stood for, a little torch or two.